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I want to thank Jonathan Silk (comment here) for pushing Popeye to further heights and deeper depths in our understanding of his favorite vegetable.  We're not "finiched" with spinach yet.

Now it's getting very interesting and confusing (Armenian is creeping in):

palak

English

Etymology

From Hindi पालक (pālak), from Sanskrit पालक्या (pālakyā).

palak (uncountable)

1. 1. (India, cooking) Spinach or similar greens (including Amaranthus species and Chenopodium album).

Etymology

Borrowed from Armenian բալախ (balax), dialectal փալախ (pʻalax).

palak (definite accusative palağı, plural palaklar)

1. 1. (dialectal, Artvin) leaf
   2. (dialectal, Ahlat) a tender soft grass that grows in wet places
   3. (dialectal, Artvin) short grass that grows again after being mown
   4. (dialectal, Divriği) crop sown early that remains short and does not form ears
   5. (dialectal, Çemişgezek, Ağın, Şanlıurfa, Ankara) dry grass
   6. (dialectal, Ahlat) type of grass eaten by animals
   7. (dialectal, Ardanuç) time of crop to form ears
   8. (dialectal, Ovacık) dry grass

• • palaḫ, palağ

• • “palaḫ (II)”, in Türkiye'de halk ağzından derleme sözlüğü [Compilation Dictionary of Popular Speech in Turkey] (in Turkish), volume 9, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu, 1977, page 3382a
  • “palak (IV), (V)”, in Türkiye'de halk ağzından derleme sözlüğü [Compilation Dictionary of Popular Speech in Turkey] (in Turkish), volume 9, Ankara: Türk Dil Kurumu, 1977, page 3382b
  • Dankoff, Robert (1995) Armenian Loanwords in Turkish (Turcologica; 21), Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, § 41, page 24
  • Bläsing, Uwe (1992) Armenisches Lehngut im Türkeitürkischen am Beispiel von Hemşin (Dutch Studies in Armenian Language and Literature; 2) (in German), Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, § 101, pages 64–65

(Wiktionary)

Armenian

spanakh սպանախ, but we also have to contend with balax բալախ < Mid. Arm. balax բալախ < Old Arm. balax բալախ (common glasswort [Salicornia europaea]), which we have cited from Wiktionary several times above, without any indication of where it comes from.  Surely, though, it must be cognate with Hindi पालक (pālak) < Sanskrit पालक्या (pālakyā).  So how / when did it pass between Sanskrit and Armenian?

Japanese

Nathan Hopson:

ホウレンソウ（菠薐草）の由来は、中国の唐代に「頗稜（ホリン）国」（現在のネパール）から伝えられたことによる^[6]。後に改字して「菠薐（ホリン）」となり、日本では転訛して「ホウレン」となった^[7][8]。「ホウレン」の語源は、「菠薐」の唐音とされ^[6]、「法蓮草」は当て字とされる。

Compare modern Nepali पालुङ्गो (pāluṅgo, “spinach”), Assamese পালেং (paleṅ), Bengali পালং (paloṅ, “spinach (Spinacia oleracea)”). Possibly the source of 菠菜 (bōcài).

The following two Chinese blogs provide much interesting information and food for thought.

 He was preceded in some of his ideas by Susan Plant Kingdom Blogspot (2/4/16), such as that 菠薐 was fancifully transcribed in Teochew / Chaozhou and other Southern Min topolects as bue-lóng 飛龍 ("flying dragon").

Korean

From Bob Ramsey:

sigeumchi 시금치

Korean word for 'spinach': it's 시금치. However, I confess I hadn't really thought about what the origin of the word was, so I immediately went to some reliable Korean lexical sources, and they all repeat what you'll find in a Wikipedia search, namely, that the word was borrowed from Chinese 赤根菜 'red-root vegetable', adding that it's probably borrowed from the Early Mandarin form of the word. It seems it was first attested in Korea in a 1517 Middle Korean text, where the form was written sikunchoy (transcribed in Martin's Yale Romanization).

There are still a lot of loose ends / fibers, so we may have to come back for a second / third helping later on.  For now, though:

Selected readings

• "Spinach: Mongolian rhapsody" (7/10/25)
• "Spinach: Indian interlude" (7/10/25)
• "Spinach: the Persian vegetable" (1/19/21)
• "Spiny spinach" (7/9/25)

[Thanks to Bob Ramsey

July 15, 2025 @ 5:00 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Borrowing, Etymology, Language and food

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